FINAL FANTASY X HD Remaster

IMO, FFX is the GOAT of JRPGs.
If you can get past some of the cringey dialogue/voice acting (looking at you, Tidus), the game's worldbuilding, setting, story, and turn based combat more than make up for it. One of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had.

Finally experiencing this game 24 years later after release... I started this up with no nostalgia & shockingly spoiler free. That is despite playing most of the mainline Final Fantasy franchise. Being rooted as a 2001 console game means many parts are a product of its time, however that being said some of the outdated aspects give it a charm that allows that fact to not ruin a good game.
Pros:
-Engaging story with thick lore.
-Memorable characters.
-Good gameplay mechanics.
-Some beautiful FMVs.
-Good amount of individual character customization for abilities, stats, & equipment. A system that really lets you go far with it if desired.
-First game in the series to include voice acting.
-Lots of optional side quests and end game quests for those who want to do more.
-Great music.
Cons:
-Story is rather convoluted & at times very confusing. If you are not a lore hound & either take the time to fully explore it all within the game or educate yourself in it online it can come off as nearly nonsensical. Had I not taken the effort to deep dive into the lore & looked for various explanations I suspect I could have played this game 3 times and not fully understood its multi layered themes and narratives.
-Being a 2021 title I was expecting this games frame rate to be easily matching/exceeding my maximum 144hz display even at native 4K, That is not the case as the game is hard locked at 30 FPS with no reasonable mod being available to increase or unlock it. From what I gathered it has something to do with the game engine itself and that is a hard limit if you want any sense of stability,
-Game optimization is inherently poor. I played on my Ryzen 7 7700X with a RX 7900 XT & 32 GB of DDR5 6000 CL 30 on a high speed PCIE 4.0 NVME SSD. My performance utilization showed that all of my components were barely breaking a sweat as expected. Yet somehow there was more than a few odd dips of the frame rate hitting into the mid 20s periodically. Clearly something with the coding or game engine is horribly unoptimized. I know even today Square Enix has a reputation for delivering rather lackluster PC ports but come on...
-I really hate Blitzball.
-I do not like the sphere grid system. It initially comes comes off as very unintuitive & the game does a crappy job explaining it. While it clearly was an experiment, I found it to be very time consuming, complex, unforgiving, & grindy(too many wasted empty slots).
-Very random difficulty spikes. Some of my game overs were just due to literally bad luck and my entire squad could get wiped out without even giving me an opportunity to react. Save spheres were often few and far between & even with taking time to grind I had more than a few close calls.
-Unskippable cut scenes that were quite long, and almost always set to play before a string of difficult back to back to back boss fights adding even more insult to injury. Infuriating.
-While generally a pro, the English voice acting at times was just awful. I suspect most of that was due to some weird voice conversion errors as sometimes it seemed like they would play the voice line but at x5 speed. Very poorly done at times and jarring.
-Some of these temple trials were conjured up by lunatics. Seemed like nothing but time wasting padding and the puzzles range from annoying to insane.
Despite my criticisms, I do think that this game is worth playing. I can understand now why its held up with the hype its carried even all these years later, something that I do not think the passage of time can change, Its a story that will probably hold up in my mind & while it has its lows it has some very high highs. Give it a shot, or if its been a long time, give it another playthrough. I know I will.

I've owned this game on multiple platforms along with FF8 & FF9 and never get bored of coming back to it, I'm a sucker for nostalgia. They truly did peak at number 10 though (IMO).

This game is a classic from my childhood however even though there have been quality of life updates, there are serious issues on pc with the video quality and I find that kind of pathetic when asking for $30 for a 23 year old game. There are some suggestions online but mine still isn't 100%

For everyoone experiencing crashes while starting the game and error messages in "windows event viewer" containing "Windows.Gaming.GameBar.PresenceServer.Internal.PresenceWriter"
Thanks for nothing, Microsoft. I hate you.
While I'm here: Great game. I love it. Highly recommend.

I have played this game well over 10000 hours since I first found it while buying my PS2. Grab the project X mod pack to make the game run better and enjoy the ride.

A game played for 40 hours for a 20 min cutscene at the end, 11/10

Great game but make sure you download the 4GB patch or you'll get a green screen during cutscenes on modern hardware.